5. A very big bookcase

COEX is not the place to visit if, like me, you suffer from "shopping legs", a condition where over-exposure to retail outlets can rob the lower limbs of their usual locomotive function. There are 1,776,000 square feet of shops and it’s underground, adding to the creeping feeling that you may be doomed to spend the rest of your days in a prison of fluorescent lights, window displays and brand promotions.

The first jelly-like symptoms of shopping legs were just beginning to manifest, and I was wondering if I’d ever see daylight again, when there appeared – a library. Not just any library, but the Starfield library, an insanely grandiloquent temple to the written word in a complex otherwise devoted to the consumer dollar.

Imagine an airy railway station taken over by bookshelves the size and shape of small ocean liners. There are 50,000 volumes here: and if you can reach it, you can read it. People do. It’s a place where lost shoppers and intense students mingle and no one is there just for the selfie.

I emerged into the sunlight and descended again into my favourite urban underground train system. Within the hour, I was on that sublime sunset bus.

So that was a tour of Seoul’s architecture: from an urban village nestled in the mountains to the world’s largest underground mall. Seoul has given us Gangnam style and chiselled K pop star cheeks; but if you ever think it’s just a place of surfaces and gloss – take yourself into a quiet corner and read a book. There are plenty of places to do that.

The writer stayed at Ryse.

This story was originally published in February 2019 and updated in September 2020.